Meet the IT

It’d be difficult to develop software that makes life easier for IT Pros without understanding what they’re dealing with, so we appreciate every insight we can get into what a day at the office looks like for an IT Administrator (as it turns out, no two days at the office really look the same). Throughout AetherStore‘s development we’ve had the opportunity to speak with some awesome IT Pros, and one of our Spiceworks beta testers agreed to let us publish some info on what makes him tick so everyone can share his insight.

Meet Shuey, a passionate IT Pro with a unique talent!

Name: John Schuepbach (“Shuey”)

Role: Network/Systems Administrator

Can you briefly describe your role as a Network/Systems Administrator?

“I support a staff of approximately 250 users, and my IT team consisting of 6 people. Pretty much anything that has to do with IT (hardware, software, networking, printers, servers, etc), I support it. Heck, some staff even think that ‘IT’ also means ‘building maintenance’, ‘janitor’ and ‘free home IT support’ LOL.”

What’s the breakdown of a typical day for you, in terms of tasks or areas of focus?

“What’s really cool about my job is that no day is ‘typical’. On my ‘best’ days, I may only get one phone call during the entire 8 hours I’m on the clock. And those are the days that I dig into projects and keep charging forward to get as much done as I can, because… On my ‘worst’ days, I’m so busy putting out fires that I’ll have one person on-hold, one person I’m talking to, and another person calling in! And it’s next to impossible to dive into anything on days like that.”

What’s your biggest pain point, what makes your job most difficult?

“Politics!! Whether it’s users who think that THEIR problem is the ONLY thing I have on my plate, or finding a way to help upper management understand what’s REALLY going on in the IT department, or conveying the importance of the need to spend money in order to maintain and effectively grow IT infrastructure, it always seems like political red tape is the biggest hurdle.”

What’s the most helpful tool in your IT arsenal?

“Having a strong ability to remotely troubleshoot and fix problems. This might seem like a simple answer, but I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen IT staff who either 1. Don’t have a strong enough foundation to know how to remotely support staff, or 2. Don’t think to use it. When a user has a problem, and their success depends on how quickly you can troubleshoot and fix the problem, leaving your ‘battle station’ to physically deal with the issue often takes extra time that ends up turning into wasted time. Plus, it never seems to fail that when you leave your desk to go take care of something, that’s when another user calls in and needs help; but now you don’t have access to all your ‘IT Tools’ because you’ve left your battle station!”

What’s your favorite part of your role?

“Things I really enjoy working on are big projects that take several hours over the course of a few days, to as many as hundreds of hours over the course of a couple of months. Especially things that involve revamping something to make it a lot better, or building something from the ground up (cleaning up an existing group policy implementation, setting up a WSUS server, creating scripts to simplify tasks, and documenting procedures and policies; to name a few).”